Snowflake Challenge: 3

Challenge three: pimp your favourite comms, fests and challenges

The community I'm by far the most active in, is snape_potter , a community for people who ship Snarry. It's quite big and pretty active. It has its own discord group and hosts two fests every year. In April/ May there's the Snarry-a-Thon and in December the Secret Snarry Swap. Both are prompt based, but for the Swap you have to follow the prompt more closely, because your work is meant to be a gift for the person who left the prompt. I have participated in both in the past and always had a great time. I find creating for the Swap easier, because you're creating for someone, which gives you the motivation to continue when you hit a road block. However, the Thon gives you a lot more freedom and I really like that too, so I'm just very happy that both fests exist and I can get the best of both worlds.

I also love snapecase , which is completely dedicated to Snape. It's only active once a year, when it hosts its annual fest, but it's worth the wait, because most entries are a treat. The fest doesn't work with prompts, but with age categories. When you sign up, you have to specify whether you want to write about Snape as a toddler, or an elderly man, or something in between, and that's it. There are no limits to genre and rating. I enjoy seeing Snape's life explored, especially if it's a part of it we don't see in canon, so I'm always looking forwards to this fest. It's actually posting right now, in Snape's birthday month, so feel free to check it out if you're interested!

Last, I feel like I can't leave hoggywartyxmas  unmentioned, which is a community dedicated to Hogwarts' teachers. Like Snapecase, it's only active when it hosts it's annual fest, but it's also worth the wait. The vast majority of hp fanfics focus on the characters from Harry's generation, so it's wonderful to see a completely different set of characters explored for a change. It's obvious that people spend a lot of time and thought on their entries for the fest because canon doesn't give them an awful lot to work with when it comes to some of the teachers, and I appreciate that. This fest is also posting right now, so go take a look!